General Chat

A Sikh was doorstepped in Gornal (near Dudley) to find out the multilingualism of his (now British) family. His wife stood besides him

Do you all speak English fluently? Yes cock, all on us.
Do you speak Hindi? Nah, we bay any gud at that
Do you speak Gujerati? Urdu - and he glanced at his wife

But I doh!!!!

FGS Hayley I cannot understand ONE word you have just typed, please use flash cards :-D

Nah - Estuary Engish for all, wiv a 'in' of Punjabi an East En frone in. ;-)

"A multicultural nation, such as the UK, is poorly symbolised by the retention of the one established language".

(Words or something fairly similar taken from The Times.)

I dont mind the odd tin of manderins reminds me of Christmas of my child hood but as my Mum was Lancs I can speak that too and often revert to it when conversing with my cousins ;-)

Chinese Laundry Blues would either be very popular in China - or would start WW3. He's got a little smile that flickers, when he's ironing ladies' ......hankies :-D ;-)

the interest was in the lack of manners of said archdruid - the interest was not in all the percentages and tripe you've posted about who wrote what, who said what, and various political parties - if you want a thread on that, start one

eye oop Hayley lass ;-) :-D

I used to love George and Gracie :-D

I am all for a controlled experiment in Lancashire where Mandarin and English are both official languages and all children have to be fully bilingual by 2030.

Lancashire could then trade with China much more effectively (larger market than whole of EEC) and you wouldn't have those embarrasing phone converstaions when trying to order your Chou Mein, Hayley :-D

Edit. And George and Gracie would be heroes of China and bring many yen to Ramsbottom.

why aye pet Woh Mau like canny gal ;-)

Home rule for Geordieland and only dialect spoken :-D

Yes ok I hold my hands up I am the one that wants all Countries and little islands only to converse in English and MUST be spoken in a Northern accent :-D

Anything now to do with Heir Lewis is blah blah blah ;-)

Yes, AnnC Bit of a dead thread. Better let it fade away as so little interest. (sarcasm)

Edit. Will post on one or two other threads. Want to say something about the snow locally. Any suitable threads? No. Better start one.

exactly who has been interested? :-S :-S :-S

Excuse me, many on this thread have been very interested in the development of language. There is a lot of activity to secure a future for many of these minority languages. Malti in Malta, Sicilian in Sicily, French in Canada, Irish in Republic of Ireland, Malayam in Kerala. And Welsh, of course.

Some want one dominant world language. That might be English (1,500 million speakers as first or second language), French (500m), Mandarin (1, 365m), Hindi (490m), Spanish (500m). Those are by far the most popular world languages.

And then we have claims of an international language like Esperanto.

This thread began with a rather slanted article from Daily Mail about a minor disagreement in a Pwllheli shop that had long since been swept under local carpet. It has developed in several directions, but bilingual policy and the strains that causes within Wales have been interesting.

And it really is good to learn different languages. And I think bilingual countries often produce people who can easily be fluent in three, four or more languages. And they are the better for that, I am sure. :-)

as Hayley says - no one gives a toss about Robyn pillock Lewis - no one reads all the tripe you are coming out with ad nauseum

John I do laugh when you try and change tac , why do you keep posting about Robyn Lewis no one is reading it , it just proves that you are trying to change the subject or promote Wales doesnt make sense to other peoples posts , No one is interested in Lewis or his bullying but you.

This may or may not be relevant to this thread, bur re-reading Second Class Citizen by Robyn Lewis (1969) is reminding me of those days of the struggle for Welsh language survival. Dafydd Iwan (the singer and political activist) was fined £108 for painting out English-only road signs. Others were given custodial sentences for same offence. One court said that they were "the enemies of the Welsh people" Yet everything they campaigned for happened within 30 years.

It is very interesting that Dr Lewis draws attention to the Maltese situation in those days. They had no bilingual policy, yet everyone spoke Malti and everything important in writing was English only. English was a second language but official because the British had controlled Malta for 150 years by then - and imposed English on the population.

At the time of writing his book, Dr Lewis comments that Dom Mintoff's goverment has agreed that the two languages should have legal parity - in islands with an area about a third of Anglesey and with a population of 300,000 (about half the number in Wales who then spoke Welsh as a first language).

No road signs in Malti, no official documents in Malti in late 1960's. Just a law that had recently been enacted for bilingualism. Anyone know what has happened to that policy since the 1960's? I have only been to Malta once (in 1980's), but am pretty sure I saw bilingual road signs.

Dr Lewis does end that chapter of his book by stating that no rain had fallen in Malta for 6 months when he was researching bilingualism there. But he had just raised his head from his scribblings and was unable to see Yr Eifl (the local mountain) at all. Nor his gatepost even. It was snowing.

Some things never change :-( :-(

John, your jokes and goading are not funny to many of us either but that hasn't stopped you. Pots and kettles spring to mind.

All I know about you is what you have posted on the boards.

Not joking or goading , just stating facts ..now you have just made up another story.. and as for many others , well yes many others know the facts as well ...